Tales my grandad told me. . .
Page 47
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MY GRANDFATHER once
related a tale of how he bought a Dennis fire engine in the midThirties equipped with ladders and pumps and, wearing a brass helmet, drove it with bells ringing through London traffic.
His interest was primarily one of transport. The vehicle was used to deliver industrial boilers until the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.
Although some such vehicles • have always generated a certain novelty interest, it was not until 1956 that the private ,collector/restorer began to express a positive interest in the preservation of commercial vehicles, which by that time, were beginning to disappear at an alarming rate.
Do they make them like they used to? I doubt it, for since then .more than 8,000 vehicles, dating back to the turn of the century, have been averted from the breakers' yards, in the main by that happy band of fanatics who seem to spend every spare moment researching and renovating vehicles.
' Preserving Commercial Vehicles (£7.95) by Keith A. Jenkinson gives an in-depth insight to the pitfalls ahead of the would-be preservationist, be it of lorries, buses, fire engines or military vehicles. The author draws from his own experiences in the huntfor a suitable example, problems on insurance and taxation, and tells of battles with crumbling coachwork, rusting radiators and continues with the presentation of the fully restored vehicle. B.B.
Patric Stephens Ltd Bar Hill, Cambridge CB3 8EL.